MOOCs and Open Education Around the World

Curtis J. Bonk, Mimi M. Lee, Thomas C. Reeves, Thomas H. Reynolds

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317614142
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

As new digital forms of formal and informal learning proliferate, there is an increasing need to better understand how people in different regions of the world are implementing massive open online courses (MOOCs) and other forms of open educational resources (OERs). Educators, researchers, politicians, and numerous other stakeholders want to grasp what the outcomes of these initiatives are and how they can be improved. Ongoing e-learning developments related to both technology and pedagogy have pushed institutions and organizations to grapple with issues of accreditation, credentialing, quality standards, innovative assessment, and learner motivation and attrition, among other areas of concern.

In response, MOOCs and Open Education Around the World explores and illuminates unique implementations of MOOCs and open education across regions and nations. The book also focuses on the various opportunities as well as the dilemmas presented in this rapidly evolving age of technology-enabled learning. What are the different delivery formats, interaction possibilities, assessment schemes, and business models? What are the key controversies or issues that must be discussed and addressed? This edited collection explains MOOCs and open education trends and issues in a variety of contexts, shares key research findings, and provides practical suggestions and recommendations for the near future.

Foreword 1

The Role of MOOCs in the Future of Education

George Siemens

Few trends in education over the past half-century match the sudden arrival of massive open online courses (MOOCs). In a span of only a few years, MOOCs have received tremendous coverage in mainstream media, traditional academic conferences and journals, and blogs and social media. Following their popularization in the fall of 2011, MOOCs were the subject of unprecedented hype as CEOs of technology startups and university presidents shared the stage in out-proclaiming each other about the ways in which traditional higher education was dead and the new guard had arrived.

The CEO of Udacity, Sebastian Thrun, an early MOOC provider that has since transitioned to corporate training, declared that in 50 years, there would only be 10 universities and Udacity would be one of them (Leckart, 2012). Compounding these bold proclamations, and drawing frustration from learning scientists, Thrun stated that they had discovered the ‘magic formula’ for learning (Carr, 2013). Government officials eagerly embraced the rhetoric, hoping to find leverage to minimize the impact of dramatic state-level defunding of higher education. California proclaimed new opportunities to cut costs and increase student success by engaging with MOOC providers (Hattori, 2013). University leaders were not isolated from these events; they woke up suddenly with new anxieties when the president of University of Virginia was fired (and then later reinstated) for being too slow to react to new trends (Rice, 2012). Top tier systems like Harvard and MIT responded with a $60 million investment in edX (MIT News Office, 2012); a new MOOC provider that arose as an alternative to Coursera and similar offerings.

As both participants and observers in this much-publicized higher education circus, academics were challenged to respond. The first substantive faculty response to MOOCs was from the philosophy faculty at San Jose State University who declared that open online courses were an attempt to dismantle departments and public education (San Jose State Philosophy Department Faculty, 2013). Was their world really crumbling? Can 200,000 students really be taught by one professor, a few teaching assistants, and some clever algorithms?

The narrative of the fall of 2011 to the early part of 2014 was overwhelmingly favorable to these notions of dramatic and substantial change. Pundits and theorists declared that the long-awaited disruption of higher education had arrived. Many of them hoped that it would confirm Peter Drucker's declaration that big university campuses would not survive 2027 (Lenzner & Johnson, 1997). Consulting firms that had previously ignored the drab world of higher education now eagerly contributed to the conversation of change, vying for stage time with a motley mix of academics, venture capital firms, and government officials.

From the perspective of early 2015, this stage of MOOC intoxication now embarrasses. The promised transformation of higher education failed to arrive. MOOCs ended up raising as many questions as they provided answers. Once some of the data of early MOOCs were published, it became clear that systemic change was delayed. Along the way, the flaws of MOOCs were eagerly dissected—high dropout rates, limited social interaction, heavy reliance on instructivist teaching, poor results for underrepresented student populations, and so on. More consequentially, change was coming for something altogether different than a single trend like MOOCs. MOOCs reflected trends rather than drove them; notably, the growing range of knowledge and learning needs of individuals in a society experiencing rapid, almost violent, change.

While the MOOC conversation is only beginning, two important concepts require attention when considering longer-term scenarios for higher education:

1. MOOCs are largely a supply-side answer to decades-long demand-side increase in learning.
2. MOOCs are not the critical trend; on the contrary, it is the complexification and digitization of higher education that is the alpha trend.

MOOCs were never about higher education. They were a response to larger societal needs related to education and training (see, for example, Chapter 28 from Ferguson, Sharples, & Beale, this volume). These same needs drove the development of information access tools like Google search, Wikipedia, and social media. In effect, learning at the start of the globally connected 21st century requires different tools and different methods for building knowledge. Everything moves more quickly in a networked world.

Consider the SARS outbreak of 2003. In a connected world, disease travels more quickly. So does information, as indicated by the rapid response of medical researchers to identify the virus causing SARS. While science often moves in multi-year cycles of peer review research and publication, identifying and understanding how to deal with SARS was a critical emergency. In a span of only a few months, the identification of the coronavirus enabled medical professionals to explore treatment and offer solutions. The speed of this research was only possible in a connected, networked, and online world.

Individuals and society require these same processes of connected learning. Industries change overnight, often taking with them the security of employment. As noted by Michael Keppell in Chapter 26 (this volume), learning, constant learning, defines all aspects of life today, whether the target of learning is a college degree, promotion at work, or simply understanding the world. Universities have traditionally played the educative role in society. Unfortunately, the learning and knowledge needs of society now require more than four years of higher education. Simply stated, in their current form, universities are mismatched to the structure and architecture of knowledge, including the pace of development. As a direct consequence, learners have sought to meet their needs through online learning, social media, and Web communities such as Stack Exchange. Higher education now faces the urgency of re-architecting itself to better serve the needs of society and modern learners.

The need to re-architect higher education is urgent. Universities have become increasingly complex. Student profiles are changing as the average entrance age increases, gender balances shift toward females as majority participants (OECD, 2013), and the traditional full-time university student is no longer in the majority (Davis, 2012). The umbrella of universities is expanding, serving a broader population with diversified needs. In response, as alluded to earlier, higher education is complexifying and many existing narratives of the idea of the university are being broadened to include previously unattended populations.

The digitalization of all aspects of modern life represents additional trends influencing learning. Higher education has a long history of expanding to respond to new learner populations. As noted in the Preface to this book, distance education and the development of open universities in the 1960s enabled second-chance access to formal education. As the Web grew in prominence, universities began experimenting with online and blended learning. These efforts were often relegated to a faculty of extension or some similar department. MOOCs, in contrast, have increased the pace of digitization for many faculties. Top tier universities have launched new departments and vice provost positions dedicated to learning innovation.

Additionally, MOOCs and other digital forms of learning serve another key benefit; namely, there are now seemingly infinite trails of data around learner interactions that can be used for research. Instead of being confined to only faculty members of education departments, digital learning research now cuts horizontally across university departments. It is not uncommon to see special issues of academic journals sharing results from previously isolated academic disciplines.

MOOCs may well be a term that fades from view in the near future. But that is not consequential. What is significant is that MOOCs effectively opened the door to new ways of thinking and operationalizing innovations in education. MOOCs play an important role in understanding what education is becoming by revealing the current state of digital learning and the university in general. MOOCs, in this sense, are both a mirror and a lens for understanding the scope of change in learning.

This book, MOOCs and Open Education Around the World, reflects the research and thinking of the most prominent and influential academics and researchers in the field(s) of distance, digital, online, and open learning. The reader is presented with a rich image of the depth and nature of changes now well underway, including openness, faculty professional development, quality assurance, student success, and corporate learning. The zeitgeist of learning in modern society is captured in the process.

The expert curation of leaders in digital learning, Curt Bonk, Mimi Lee, Tom Reeves, and Tom Reynolds, captures the legacy of this highly momentous time of learning innovation. The potential of digital learning to provide access to new opportunities has long been known by researchers and practitioners in distance and online education. The editors of this unique volume offer a splendid overview of the state of learning—what is known, what learning is becoming, and what it means in practice. While the tremendous pace of innovations in education can be daunting at times, this book provides the basis for understanding the unprecedented opportunities available to individual academics, universities, and societies to remake themselves in a knowledge age.

The long-heralded learning revolution is at the doorstep. Future generations will benefit from the shape and structure of learning that is now being created. Prudent guides and thoughtful dialogue are required to ensure that learning remains a liberating and enlightening process in the service of a better society and greater opportunities for all.

George Siemens researches technology, networks, analytics, and openness in education. Dr. Siemens is the Executive Director of the Learning Innovation and Networked Knowledge Research Lab at the University of Texas, Arlington. He has delivered keynote addresses in more than 35 countries on the influence of technology and media in education, organizations, and society. His work has been profiled in provincial, national, and international newspapers (including the New York Times), radio, and television. His research has received numerous awards, including honorary doctorates from Universidad de San Martín de Porres and Fraser Valley University for his pioneering work in learning, technology, and networks. Dr. Siemens is a founding member and first President of the Society for Learning Analytics Research (http://www.solaresearch.org/). He has advised government agencies in Australia, the European Union, Canada, and the United States, as well as numerous international universities, on digital learning and utilizing learning analytics for assessing and evaluating productivity gains in the education sector and improving learner results. In 2008, he pioneered massive open online courses (sometimes referred to as MOOCs). He blogs at http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/ and on Twitter: gsiemens.

References

• Carr, D.F. (2013, August 19). Udacity CEO says MOOC “magic formula” emerging. Information Week. Retrieved from http://www.informationweek.com/software/udacity-ceo-says-mooc-magic-formula-emerging/d/d-id/1111221.
• Davis, J. (2012, October). School enrollment and work status: 2011. American community survey briefs, 11–14. US Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration: United States Census Bureau. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acsbr11-14.pdf.
• Hattori, K. (2013, January 14). Governor Jerry Brown, Udacity announce pilot program for $150 classes, EdSurge. Retrieved from https://www.edsurge.com/n/2013-01-14-governor-jerry-brown-udacity-announce-pilot-program-for-150-classes.
• Leckart, S. (2012, March 20). The Stanford education experiment could change higher learning forever. Wired Magazine, 20. Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/2012/03/ff_aiclass/all/.
• Lenzner, R. , & Johnson, S.S. (1997, March 10), Seeing things as they really are. Forbes, 159(5), 122–128. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/forbes/1997/0310/5905122a.html.
• MIT News Office . (2012, May 2). MIT and Harvard announce edX. MIT News. Retrieved from http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2012/mit-harvard-edx-announcement-050212.
• OECD . (2013, October). How are university students changing? Education Indicators in Focus. Retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/edu/skills-beyond-school/EDIF%202013--N%C2%B015.pdf.
• Rice, A. (2012, September 11). Anatomy of a campus coup. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/magazine/teresa-sullivan-uva-ouster.html?pagewanted=all.
• San Jose State Philosophy Department Faculty . (2013, May 2). An open letter to Professor Michael Sandel from the Philosophy Department at San Jose State U. Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/article/The-Document-Open-Letter-From/138937/.

Foreword 2

Open(ing up) Education for All . . . Boosted by MOOCs?

Fred Mulder

A foreword to a book can be expected to highlight some of the terms and issues included in its title. Given the thought-provoking and promising title MOOCs and Open Education Around t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Epigraph
• Dedication
• Table Of Contents
• Foreword 1: The Role of MOOCs in the Future of Education
• Foreword 2: Open(ing up) Education for All . . . Boosted by MOOCs?
• Preface: Actions Leading to MOOCs and Open Education Around the World
• Part 1 MOOCs and Open Education
• Part 2 Open Education Opportunities Now and On the Horizon
• Part 3 Researching and Evaluating Notions of MOOCs and Openness
• Part 4 Thoughts on the Quality of MOOCs and OER
• Part 5 Designing Innovative Courses, Programs, and Models of Instruction
• Part 6 MOOCs and Open Education in the Developing World
• Part 7 MOOCs and Open Learning Alternatives in Corporate Settings
• Part 8 Future Glimpses and Open Options
• Index